Thoughts on FLO gravel wheel breakage & the carbon/gravel intersect

Or a more direct comparison I paid $1200 for Aeolus Pro 3V in March 2021 but now listed at $680/$820 = $1500. The 2 year warranty and post 2-year discounted repair details here: https://www.trekbikes.com/us/en_US/carbon_care_wheels/ Upgrading to more expensive Bontrager wheels is essentially getting you lower weight.

The Flo wheels are about the same price.

Always worth reading the warranty before buying carbon hoops IMHO.

Right, but they have a “no fault” warranty, where they will warranty it regardless of (mis)use.
That is different from a warranty against manufacturer defects. But just serves as another reason to choose brand “x” over “y” I suppose

:joy: Well, I don’t want to engage in hyperbole but I rather suspect that quite a lot of these FLO gravel wheels are going to be breaking. It’s probably less a question of thin margin or healthy margin a more an existential question. Sort of the ‘this is it’ moment from the movie Margin Call.

I agree that the no fault warranty replacement policies are a notable part of the value proposition of buying ‘name brand’ wheels. All of these that I have looked at only apply to the original purchaser, which is reasonable, but makes 2nd hand wheel value lower - based on a ‘no warranty’ wheel.

If you use Zipp’s tire pressure calculator you arrive at 47 psi front and 50 psi rear in dry gravel conditions and 21 mm inner rim width and 18 lbs bike weight. In the wet that reduces to 42 psi and 46 psi, respectively. 65 psi is way off from that recommendation.

But personally, I’d probably run lower pressures than that, in line with what the people suggested here, especially if you go tubeless and mostly ride offroad.

One reason to sell to someone local, or someone you know…